John DeDakis understands the news business and the sea-change going on within the communications industry. He was a journalist with CNN for 25 years and served as the Senior Copy Editor for “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” He also served as a White House correspondent and is currently a writing coach and journalism teacher at the University of Maryland–College Park. “Troubled Water” is the third novel in DeDakis’ Lark Chadwick Mystery and thriller series.

Lark discovers a body in the waters of the Chattahoochee River along the Georgia-Alabama border near a city DeDakis calls Columbia, GA, a thinly-veiled name change for Columbus, GA. She is on her way from being a reporter in Pine Bluff, Wisconsin to work for a daily newspaper in Columbia as a reporter on the City Desk. The dead woman she discovers is one of two who end up being murdered during Lark’s first couple weeks on the job, and Lark becomes a target also, mostly because she will not stop investigating these murders. There are many interesting characters that Lark works with on the newspaper–the hot-shot photo-journalist who is accused of the murders, the assistant on the City Desk who offers Lark a place to stay until she is settled in the community, the City Desk editor who seems to want to save Lark from the wrath of the publisher, and the mysterious former City Desk reporter who now does local news stories from an independent blog.

“Troubled Water” is an action-packed thriller with very human characters set in an atmospheric southern community. Lark Chadwick, who by the end of the book has moved on to a post for AP in Washington, DC, is no doubt going to be a staple mystery heroine for many years to come.

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